When not working on internal projects, Candace Faber will be the public face of Seattle IT in the civic technology community. She will reach out and engage with the local community on open data and other public technology projects.

Other assignments will also include overseeing the Digital Equity initiative/Digital Equity Action Committee, working with City departments to shape open data and civic technology projects, representing the City of Seattle to the open data and civic technology community and organizations.

Faber brings an impressive resume to the new position. Since 2013, she has worked in Seattle as a strategy consultant and project manager, leading efforts such as Hack the Commute, Hack to End Homelessness, and the Washington Technology Industry Association’s FullConTech. As the Government-Community Liaison for Open Seattle, she has worked closely with Seattle’s open data program, local technology firms, and the developer community to support our local civic technology ecosystem. She will continue and expand this work as the City’s new Civic Technology Advocate.

Previously, Candace was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, serving at the U.S. embassies in Russia, Poland, Belarus, and Afghanistan, and on the global e-Diplomacy team. Candace holds a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Washington.

2014 was a year of accomplishment and transition for the Seattle Department of Information Technology.

The Annual Report also shows what DoIt has learned about internet access and use in Seattle

Seattle Channel took home many Emmy Awards. DoIT laid the groundwork for Seattle’s national leadership on our municipal Privacy Principles and Toolkits. We also transferred just over 55% of the City’s 102,000 Web pages into our Content Management System (CMS) and ramped up the migration to the cloud in Office 365.

The projects, metrics and analytics that were either started or completed in 2014 you can find them: our digital cities survey, the technology access and adoption report, infrastructure enhancements, WMBE purchasing, uptime statistics and much more.

Have you spent much time wondering about green computing? No, it is not taking your iPad with you to the Irish pub on St. Patricks day.

A good technology operations manager has to live and breathe green computing 24 hours a day. We have to understand the implications to power and cooling for every technology acquisition we make. We need to know about EPEAT and EnergyStar. Will our high-speed printers, used to print your utility bills, accommodate 100% recycled paper? How fast can we virtualize our computing environment? The list goes on and on. . .

We are also put in the position of having to defend our decisions. Not that many people love it when you implement software that shuts down their PC when they aren’t using it. And what about those energy efficient multi-function printers that go to sleep and take forever to wake up, causing you to have to wait awhile for your document to print? I don’t know a single person who thinks that is a good thing.

When these decisions are made I know I am most likely going to lose popularity points with some of my customers. I make the unpopular decision anyway, knowing it is important for the environment and absolutely critical to ensure we are using taxpayers’ money wisely. I think my job is to do both.

Therefore, I have given up my dream of being the popular girl. . . no prom queen tiara for me.

Welcome to Tech Boss Banter, part of the Department of Information Technology’s Tech Talk blog. Join us for a light-hearted view of technology management through the eyes of Department of Information Technology employee, Deb Schlenker, Director – Computing Services. With any luck it will be informative, thought provoking and fun!

Change. You can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. Kind of like your smartphone, laptop, parents, spouses, children. . . well you get the point.

However in the workplace you do have to live with change. Changes can include a new technology, a new business process, a reorganization, budget cuts, and so much more. If you are an effective technology manager you need to understand the impact of any change on your staff and how to manage that change. It isn’t easy, especially when there is a lot of resistant. It requires constant communication, patience and time. All things that are in short supply in our busy world.

No need to panic though – I just googled “managing change” and got around 22 million hits. There is a lot of help out there. You just have to take the time to do your research and practice what you learn. I believe technology managers owe it to their employees to be the best change manager they can be. Don’t you?